Category Archives: Catalan

Montleek: Robert, is it possible that in Western Europe, the regional lects have been preserved better, while in eastern Europe are preserved worse? There was communism/socialism in Eastern Europe, therefore more tendency not to continue speaking with regional lect. Robert, is it possible that in western Europe, the regional lects have been preserved better, while in eastern Europe are preserved worse? There was communism/socialism in eastern Europe, therefore more tendency not to continue speaking with regional lect .

In Spain, there is are several major languages such as Asturian-Leonese, Extremaduran-Cantabrian, Eonavian/Berciano, Basque, Catalan, Aragonese, Benasquesque, Galician and some odd forms of Portuguese. Murcian, Andalucian, Churro and Manchengo are very marginal cases, but are probably better seen as divergent dialects of Castillian.

With Catalan and Asturian-Leonese, you are absolutely in a situation of a different lect in every town or even village.

Eonavian is absolutely a separate language though it is not recognized. Berciano is the southern part of the Eonavian language.

There is definitely more than one language in Galician.

Cantabrian is actually a language and not a Spanish dialect. In fact, it is a part of the recognized language called Extremaduran.

There may be 3-4 languages inside Basque; surely there are at least two.

Benasquesque is actually a separate language between Catalan and Aragonese.

Occitan is only spoken as Aranese, but is probably a separate language.

You folks were not able to answer all nine of them correctly, so I will give you the answers.

Pink – Catalan

Light green – Aranese or Occitan (no one got this one)

Purple – Aragonese (no one got this one)

Aquamarine – Basque

Red – Castillian

Green – Asturian-Leonese

Yellow – Galician

Dark green – Extremaduran (no one got this one)

Brown – Fala (no one got this one)

Aranese is the Aranese dialect of Occitan which is either a separate language or a dialect of Occitan depending on how you look at it. Fala is actually a dialect of Galician but it is considered a language for sociopolitical reasons. There is another part of the dark green Extremaduran language which is typically not recognized. This is Cantabrian, spoken to the east of the green Asturian-Leonese area and to the west of the aquamarine Basque area.

A linguist named Mario Pei undertook a study of Romance languages to determine how far they had deviated from Latin. This is what he came up with. Lower scores means closer to Latin and higher scores means further from Latin:

I had always heard that Sardo was like Latin frozen in time. Italian is also said to be quite close to Latin still. In fact, it is from this land that Latin emerged in the first place. Spanish has deviated quite a bit, but I am not certain why that is. For one thing, quite a bit of Arabic has gone into Spanish. As far as other influences, I am not sure. There are influences from pre-Latin languages, but I am not sure how significant they are. The impact of Basque (which would be included under pre-Latin influences, is also not known, but it has effected Aragonese and Aranese.

Romanian has obviously been flooded with Slavic words.

Occitan is also different, but this is probably due to the French influence as Occitan is sort of a Spanish-French hybrid language like Catalan.

Portuguese is also very different, but I am not sure why that is. Clearly the Portuguese vowels have gone crazy, but why is that? Brazilian Portuguese had influence from Indian languages, but that did not affect European Portuguese.

French is the most different of all. The odd vowels appear to originate from a Celtic base (Gaulish). In addition, quite a bit of Germanic has gone in via the Franks and there was a strong Norse influence in the far north. Basque and Breton influences are not known. It is due to this strong differentiation that other Romance language speakers say that no one can understand the French.

Here is some new work I did on mutual intelligibility in the Romance family. If you speak any of these languages, feel free to chime in. The one figure I am worried about is 0% of Italian understanding of Romanian. One informant said that, but I have a feeling it is higher than that.

Intelligibility Figures for Romance Languages

Intelligibility for Spanish speakers, oral: 80% of Asturian, Aragonese and and Extremaduran, 78% of Galician, 62% of Catalan, 50% of Portuguese, 25% of Italian, 6% of Romanian, 1% of French, and 0% of Sicilian.

Spanish has 95% written intelligibility of Ladino, 93% of Galician, 87% of Catalan, 78% of Portuguese, 50% of Italian and Romanian, and 16% of French.

Asturian has 82% oral intelligibility of Mirandese and 71% of Portuguese.

Mirandese has 82% oral intelligibility of Asturian and 71% of Portuguese.

Portuguese has 95% oral intelligibility of Almedilha dialect, 86% of Galician, 71% of Mirandese and Asturian, 58% of Spanish, 40% of Hermisende dialect, 55% of Catalan, 25% of Leonese and Italian, 17% of French, and 5% of Romanian.

Portuguese has 90% written intelligibility of Italian.

Galician has 58% intelligibility of Catalan, and 0% of Extremaduran and Andalucian Spanish.

French has 30% oral intelligibility of Catalan, 27% of Portuguese, 16% of Italian, 13% of Spanish, 7% intelligibility of Romanian, and 0% of Sicilian.

French has 90% written intelligibility of Catalan and 70% of Portuguese.

Romanian has 70% oral intelligibility of Istroromanian, 40% of Italian, 25% of Spanish, and 15% of French and Portuguese.

Romanian has 60% written intelligibility of French, 45% of Galician and Piedmontese and 33% of Italian.

Italian has 40% oral intelligibility of Catalan, 16% of Portuguese, 11% of French, and 0% of Romanian, Arpitan and Sicilian.

Italian has 75% written intelligibility of French and Spanish, 25% of Portuguese, and 20% of Catalan.

If you are interested, tell us in the comments what Romance languages you have knowledge of. As you can see, I am into Romance languages.

Spanish: I had four years in school and then another 1 1/2 years at university, so I can speak it fairly well. I often use it with Spanish speakers around town. However, I am not fluent like a native speaker by any means. I can also read it fairly well to the point where I can actually do research in it. But I certainly do not know every word, and it is not like doing research in English. I can write Spanish fairly well. When I meet South Americans on the Net, they ask me if I was born in Latin America. However, some of them catch on that I am not a native speaker. I can understand it pretty well when spoken but I have a lot of problems with radio, TV and any video or audio in Spanish. I can understand it better if I read it.

I was talking to this Guatemalan woman, and after a while, she said, “You know…You don’t really speak Spanish, do you? But boy do you try!”

This is the only Romance language I can write.

Portuguese: Well I studied it a bit because I was dating a Brazilian woman. I started to learn the language within 24 hours after meeting her. I spoke to her in English and Spanish and she spoke to me in Portuguese, English and Spanish. She spoke some English and Spanish. This arrangement actually worked out pretty well!

I used to get emails a lot from another Brazilian woman I know. I tried to read them, but it was pretty slow going. I still study Portuguese and I try to read it sometimes. I even try to do research in Portuguese, but research in Portuguese is so much harder than doing it in Spanish. To tell the truth, reading Portuguese is a pain. I do know some words of Portuguese but not a lot. I can’t really speak it at all at the moment. When it is spoken, I can understand some of it, but that is mostly due to Spanish resemblance. All in all, I consider Portuguese to be a pain in the ass.

Galician: Cannot speak it but can understand it pretty well when spoken in the standard dialect. I understand it a lot better than I understand Portuguese because it sounds a lot more like Spanish. I have quite a hard time reading Galician. It really isn’t fun at all. Galician is a pain to read. I know a few words, hardly any really.

Asturian/Leonese: Cannot speak it. Cannot understand a word of it when spoken. I have tried to read it and even do research in it, but that is just awful. One of the worst languages in Iberia to read. I do know a few words here and there.

Mirandese: Cannot speak it. Haven’t listened to it in a while. Surprisingly, I find this language fairly easy to read. It looks a lot like Spanish. It is much easier to read than Portuguese or Galician. Don’t really know any words though.

Aragonese: Can understand some of it when spoken. It is very hard to read and I cannot speak it. Do not know any words.

Extremaduran: Reading this language is a complete pain, more or less like reading Asturian-Leonese if not worse. Do not know any words.

Fala: I have heard Fala spoken on videos and I can understand some of it, but honestly, this language is quite a mess, and Galician is a lot easier to understand. I don’t know any words. I have never seen it written down, and I am not even sure if it is a written language.

Catalan: I cannot understand a word of it when spoken, and I cannot speak it. Reading Catalan is quite difficult and very slow-going. It is not pleasant at all. This language is very different from the rest of the Iberian languages. I do not think I know any Catalan words.

Occitan: Cannot speak it. Can understand Aranese fairly well when spoken. I have tried to read Occitan many times but it is a complete nightmare to read. I do not know one word of Occitan.

French: I did take a semester of French at university. I also had a French girlfriend for a while. Not that it did me any good. I cannot understand one word of spoken French. I have tried to speak it a bit, but French speakers kept laughing at me (including the girlfriend) so that inhibited me. I have tried to write French to French speakers on the Net but I can hardly write it at all. French is very hard to read, much worse than Spanish. I have even tried to do research in French, but it was extremely slow-going. French is very different from Iberian languages. I continue to study French off and on. I do know quite a few French words.

Arpitan: Never seen it written, cannot speak it. When listening to it, I can only get occasional words. Very hard to understand. I do not know any words.

Italian: I have studied Italian somewhat but it is very different from Spanish or French and many words do not have obvious connections to Spanish or French. I can read a bit of Italian, but it is very slow-going. I do know some words. I cannot speak Italian at all, and I have never even tried to write it. Italian varies when listening to it on video. With some slow TV-type announcers, I can get some of it. With regular speech, I often will not get one word in a 5 minute broadcast. Italian is extremely hard to understand.

Romansch: I can hardly understand this at all when spoken on TV broadcasts. Interviews with native speakers are easier to understand if they speak slowly. Intelligibility is about like Italian. I do not know any words.

Romanian: Simply awful. I have listened to 8 minute broadcasts of this language and I could not understand one word. Romanian is very hard to read. It is much worse than Italian when it comes to not having obvious connections to other Romance languages I know. This is one of the worst ones of all in terms of reading. I do not know any words. Cannot speak it.

I can speak Spanish decently, though I read it better, and that wasn’t a tough read. That being said, I can read Portuguese pretty well too and can’t understand it spoken much at all.

Well try doing research in Portuguese then. I can speak a bit of Portuguese, and I have been trying to read it for some time now. Lately I am doing a lot of research, and much of it is in Spanish. I use translators a lot, but even then I have to go back to the original Spanish. I can do research ok in Spanish, but it is not real easy.

I also run across a lot of Portuguese, Galician and Asturian. Research is quite hard in all of these. I am having an extremely hard time reading Portuguese, and previously I thought I could read it fairly well. Also I have a friend in Brazil, and she used to send me mails all the time in Portuguese, and honestly, I was pretty lost reading that stuff. I think Spanish-Portuguese written intelligibility is overrated.

I cannot understand much spoken Portuguese either. I watched a clip on Youtube the other day about some city council meeting in a town on the Spanish-Portuguese border, and I could not understand a word they said.

I have a feeling that the oral intelligibility of Romance is also overrated. You hear a lot of anecdotes. Eonavians said that Western Asturians could not understand one word of Eonavian, which is a Western Asturian-Eastern Galician transitional dialect!

Castillian speakers who went to Valencia to live said that after seven years, they still could not understand one word of Valencian and Catalan spoken at normal speed. However, they could understand TV announcers in those lects very well because the announcers used Castillian intonation as opposed to Catalan/Valencian intonation.

Some people from the north of Spain say that they cannot understand a single word of the hard Andalucian spoken on the streets of the big cities.

Commenter James Schipper lived in Brazil for years and is fluid in Portuguese. However, he only understood 40% of the strange lect spoken in Hermisende, Zamora, in Spain. Linguists say that this is a Galician dialect with heavy Portuguese influence and significant Leonese influences. On some linguistic maps, it is colored as a Portuguese dialect.

He was also able to understand only 25% of Alistano Leonese.

And we haven’t even left the Iberian Peninsula yet!

A while back, in a large city in northern Italy, an old woman had become lost. They took her into the police station and she was chattering away for a few hours. They kept asking her questions but she did not understand them as she didn’t speak Standard Italian. People had all sorts of theories on where she was from. Some thought Greece, and there were many other guesses. Finally a worker came in who was familiar with the strange Western Lombard dialect from the high northern Italian mountains that she spoke. The old lady and the cops all spoke a Northern Italian dialect, and none of them could understand the old lady.

On the border of France and Italy in and around the city of Menton near Nice, a lect called Mentonasque is spoken. It is close to the old language of Nizzard spoken in Nice. This is an Occitan-Ligurian transitional dialect, a halfway between Maritime Provencal Occitan spoken in France and Ligurian spoken in Italy. Nevertheless, Mentonasque speakers say that they cannot understand a word of the Ligurian spoken in Italy. And linguists now see Mentonasque as a Ligurian dialect!

One would think that if these languages were that close, one could learn one or another of them pretty easily. To some extent this is true, but not to the extent of dialects of a single tongue or very closely related languages where you can adjust fairly easy over a period of 1 hour-3 weeks.

For instance, in Asturias, there are many Castillian speakers who have been living there for some time who simply state that they cannot understand Asturian. If they were really so close, one would think they would have picked it up easily over the years.

Down in the Bierzo zone transitional between the Leonese and Galician languages, there are Castillian speakers who have been living there for years who cannot understand Leonese, Galician or Berciano. With languages like that being spoken around them all the time, one would think they would have picked up them easily over the years.

The truth is that these languages are not as close as they seem, and much has to do with intonation as the example of the Castillian speaker living in Valencia indicates. In addition, one way to tell that you are dealing with a separate language and not a dialect of a single tongue is that the other language doesn’t necessarily get easier to understand the more you hear it. The factor of motivation cannot be ruled out. The Castillian speakers above who cannot understand Galician, Leonese, Berciano, Asturian, Valencian, Catalan or Andalucian have obviously never taken the time to try to learn the language. They simply cannot be bothered. If people do not want to try to learn a language, even a very closely related one spoken around them all the time, they simply will not learn it.

It is said that after 2-3 months of close contact, a Castillian speaker can pick up Aragonese, Catalan, Asturian, Leonese or Galician. But that is if one is sufficiently motivated. The powerful variable of motivation in language learning cannot be underestimated.

Although it is not a popular cause in the US, this blog strongly supports the armed struggle of ETA, the armed Basque nationalist Red front. The Basque cause is very poorly known in the US and probably in most of the rest of the world, hence, here is a bit of a primer.

The Basque people are probably the last remaining group of the original populations that inhabited Europe before the Indo-European (IE) invasion and conquest about 8000 years ago. The best theory indicates that the IE people probably came out of the southern Ukraine near the Black Sea.

Their first stop was Anatolia, and this is why the Hittite languages (ancient languages of Anatolia, or Turkey) are by far the most divergent languages in the IE language family.

In fact, I subscribe to a controversial theory that renames Indo-European as Indo-Hittite due to this deep split. For those who don’t know about the IE language family, IE, or proto-IE (PIE), was the mother tongue of most of the languages of Europe.

A few tongues in Europe are non-IE, such as Finnish, Hungarian, Turkish, Estonian and Basque. Outside of Europe, we have some other IE languages in some pretty distant places, including Kurdish, Persian, Hindi, Urdu, Pashto, Sanskrit and a variety of languages related to them that are not well known by Westerners.

Apparently a divergent group of PIE left the PIE homeland and moved into the area of India, Iran and Afghanistan thousands of years ago.

Before the IE people spread out over Europe 8000 years ago, Europe was home to a variety of peoples who are very poorly known. Almost nothing is known about their civilizations (such as they existed), who they were, what they did, how they lived, what they ate, much less what languages they spoke.

The original inhabitants of Europe at this time weren’t Cro-Magnons, but they weren’t exactly Manhattan metrosexuals with cell phones either. After the IE people spread out across Europe, they apparently displaced, intermarried with, or wiped out almost all of the indigenous people of Europe.

One group that held out for a while were the Etruscans, residents of Italy. We actually have some retained some scraps of the Etruscan language somehow, but it doesn’t seem obviously related to anything else. The only other group that held out was apparently the Basques.

The theory that the Basques are the last remaining original inhabitants of Europe has long been a popular theory based on the fact that the Basque language is unlike any other language in Europe, or, really, in the world. Formally, Basque is considered to be a language isolate – not related to any other language.

However, I believe, based on very controversial theories, that Basque is related to some languages of the Caucasus (such as Chechen), an obscure group of Siberian tongues known as the Ket Family, an obscure language in far northern Pakistan called Burushaski, and also to the vast Sino-Tibetan family, of which Chinese is the most famous member.

Basque seems to me to be closest to various Caucasian languages. The latest genetic research has shown that the Basques have a blood type frequency that is divergent from all other populations in Europe. Interestingly, the closest people with this blood frequency are in the Caucasus Mountains.

In their mountain hideaways, the rugged Basques fought off many intruders and managed to keep a lot of other conquerors out of their hair with a hands-off attitude. Although the Romans conquered the area, they basically left the Basques pretty much alone as too much hassle, a common attitude of many conquerors that came through the region.

The Basques converted to Christianity along with the rest of Europe, and are known for their passionate, conservative Catholicism. With the consolidation of the Spanish nation, the question of how to deal with the Basques came up. For centuries, most governments in Spain and France preferred to pretty much leave the Basques alone.

During the Spanish Civil War in 1936-39, the Basque Region was a hotbed of Communism, Socialism, Anarchism and all varieties of Leftism. It was a major Republican stronghold. The Spanish Anarchists even “ruled” parts of the Basque country for part of this time, probably the only time in history that any humans have ever lived under anarchist “rule”.

The Basques fought very hard against fascism. Picasso’s famous “Guernica” painting is a painting of the Franco-Nazi air raid on the city of Guernica in the Basque Country, a raid that killed 6,000 people and outraged the world. A Basque Communist female fighter named “La Passionara” became quite famous.

The flood of Nazi guns was too much for the Republicans. The Republicans lost the war and fascism, in the persona of Generalissimo Franco, came to Spain. During World War 2, many Basques fought for the resistance against the Nazis, especially in France. The Basque region was known as a major redoubt and rear base for the French resistance.

When Franco came to power, a new chapter of history opened for the Basque struggle. Franco tried to consolidate Spain as no ruler ever had before. He demanded that all regional minorities adopt a “Spanish” mindset, language and loyalty. He ferociously tried to wipe out all vestiges of the Basque, Catalan and Galician languages and cultures.

Catalans speak a Romance language in between Spanish and French and live along the southern coast of Spain by the French border in and around Barcelona. The Romance family is a subfamily of IE that is derived from Latin. Romance includes Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, Catalan, Sardinian, Corsican, Romansh (an obscure language in Switzerland) and some lesser-known tongues.

Galicians speak a dialect of Portuguese, believe it or not, and live along the rocky northern coast of Spain by the border with Portugal. Many Galicians are fishermen.

The Basque people resisted Franco for a while, but he put many of them in prison and really hurt the Basque movement. In 1959, a faction broke away from the Basque Nationalist Movement, formed the ETA, and took up arms.

They planted several bombs in Spanish cities that year. In 1968 , the ETA officially adopted armed struggle. The insurgency has been going on for 46 years now, though it is not as strong as it used to be.

Hardly any Americans realize the significant level of support for even the armed insurgency in the Basque country of Spain. As of a few years ago, there were regular street protests and even riots, as young nationalists run amok through the streets, smashing stuff and writing graffiti.

I have seen video footage in the past decade of very militant pro-ETA rallies in the Basqueland with large crowds of supporters milling around.

Many folks you would consider to be regular folks – middle-class people who dress well, drive nice cars and have good jobs – are strong supporters of even the armed Basque movement. It’s quite a shock to see dowdy-looking housewife types and middle-aged office workers with potbellies angrily waving banners supporting the ETA bombers.

Yet this is the reality of popular support for Basque nationalism, even the armed wing, in the Basque Country. Although Batasuna, the political wing of the ETA, was banned recently, another party took its place and garnered around 15-20% of the vote. Total support for complete independence in the Basque Country or Euskara, as they call it, is around 35-40%, or possibly higher, in my opinion.

Note: I just spoke to a German Communist friend of mine about the support level for the independence movement in Basqueland. Here is what he said: “Oh, I think almost all Basques support full independence. And even many Spanish migrants in Basqueland don’t really oppose the ETA or the independence movement.”

Note the presence of Spanish migrants who have moved into the Basque Country, mostly to take jobs. They are really the wild card in any poll about levels of independence support in Basqueland.

What is the struggle about, anyway? Well, a significant number of the Basque people (maybe almost 100% – see above) want independence from Spain.

Possibly a lesser number desire independence from France, but the struggle in French Basqueland is another matter and beyond the scope of this post. The Spanish government has always refused to hold a referendum on independence for Euskara, a key Basque demand.

The Czech Republic split from Slovakia, referendums have been held on independence in Scotland and Quebec, and yet Spain bucks the tide in the civilized world. The economy is surely a stickler. The Basque country holds much of Spain’s heavy industry, and how well Spain would fare economically after Basque succession is largely unknown. But it should at least be a subject of discussion, and Spain has put it out of limits.

As long as Spain refuses to provide a Basque referendum on independence, the Basque struggle, including probably the armed front, will go on. That’s all there is to it. Spain can end the insurgency tomorrow by opening peace talks with the ETA (Spain has never done this) and ultimately agreeing to hold a referendum on Basque independence.

An interesting sidelight to the Basque struggle is the role of women and feminism in the conflict. Some of the toughest ETA cadre have been women, often tougher than the men. And ETA male fighters, though nominally Marxist, have long been known to hold surprisingly conservative, Old World type views on the role of women in Basque society, opinions heavily tinged by conservative Catholicism.

Very interesting article! I support this secessionist movement 100%! It’s clear that Catalans really are a nation in need of national liberation. I think that Spain could still do quite well if they let Catalonia go. The Catalans have never been happy living in Spain, and nationalist sentiment is very high. It’s a typical subject of animated dinner table conversations at the family table – that’s how normal and heated politics is in this part of the world.

Catalan is a separate language from Spanish, and Spanish speakers can’t exactly understand Catalan speakers. I know I have a hard time reading Catalan myself. Catalan looks and sounds sort of like a mixture between Spanish and French. It is close to the Occitan language of which Provencal is a part.

Language politics is a big deal here. Valencians, who only speak a dialect of Catalan and not a separate language, have formed a ridiculous movement that says Valencian is a separate language from Catalan. It’s as if the British decided that British English and American English are two separate languages. However, the use of Valencian as a tongue is declining.

Catalan is most spoken in the north around Barcelona. It’s in pretty bad shape in France. It’s also spoken in the Balearic Islands, where it’s not in particularly good shape either. There is a tiny community of Catalan speakers on Sardinia.

There are also many Spanish speakers in Catalonia who do not speak Catalan. Lately, Catalan nationalists have taken the reigns demanding the Catalan be the language of instruction in schools. They advocate having no schools where Spanish is the language of instruction. In addition, all building signs must be in Catalan also, not only in Spanish. But Catalan signs need not carry a Spanish translation.

So Spanish speakers feel that they are being discriminated against, and they are angry.

If Catalonia got its independence, the new government would probably make Catalan the official language.

As you can see, Catalans feel that they don’t get their money’s worth out of the taxes they pay. They pay more than their fair share of taxes and don’t get back much in return. To them it’s a ripoff. With the horrific crash of the Spanish capitalist economy (30% unemployment), a lot if Catalans simply want out.

However, the Spanish state is horrified by this since Catalonia is a powerful industrial engine for the state of Spain. In addition, Spanish Francoist fascists never really went away, and to some extent, this mindset continues on at the upper levels of Spanish politics. The Francoist elements are so insane and awful that they would probably try to prevent Catalan separatism by force.

To the north, independentists have won election the Basque Country too. I have long supported their movement, and I even support the armed ETA guerrillas. It would also be difficult to split off the Basque Country as it is also an economic engine.

There is a similar movement in Galicia in the far northwest near Portugal, but it’s far less popular.

There is another movement in Belgium which is discussed in the article whereby Dutch speaking Flanders wants to secede from French speaking Wallonia.

This article also shows how asinine HBD theory is. Catalans have a reputation for being hard working and more productive than most of the rest of Spain, who the Catalans see as a bunch of layabouts. Yet the people of Catalonia and those of the rest of Spain are identical genetically. The differences are merely cultural. A similar dynamic is at play in Belgium, where the industrious Flemish are the same genetically as the purported layabout Walloons.

According to HBD idiots, every time you have harder working people and layabouts in the same country, it’s always a racial thing. Usually the busy folks are the Whites or the often more Northern type (who tend to be more White) while the lackadaisical parasites are the (often more southern), “niggerized” or “Indianized” folks.

We see this most typically in Italy (White Padanian “Celts” versus Sicilian-niggers), but you see it in other places too. Even the fight in the EU now over the north (read Whiter folks) supporting the unproductive welfare cases in the South (read: niggerized Whites, mongrels, off-Whites or non-Whites) boils down to this kind of a sick racist dynamic.

There may even be something similar going on in India with the Indian bread basket of Punjabi “white folks” complaining about having to support the more Australoid “Indian niggers” in the south.

There are some progressive people on here who are enamored of some aspects of this HBD crap, and I really urge you to be careful with these ugly racist arguments.

Europe’s Crisis Spawns Calls for a Breakup—of Spain

By Matt Moffett

Many people in Catalonia, a province known as “the factory of Spain,” feel that the rest of the country has become an economic millstone. They’re pushing for an independent Catalonia. WSJ’s Matt Moffett reports from Barcelona.

BARCELONA, Spain—This vibrant northern region of Catalonia has long been known as the “factory of Spain” for generating wealth that helped sustain the entire nation. Now Catalonia, beaten down by years of recession, has become the battleground in what threatens to become an economic civil war.

Protesters in Catalonia last month marched for independence in Barcelona.

In protests large and small, hundreds of thousands of Catalans are embracing a stark proposition: Only by breaking ties with Spain and becoming an independent country can Catalonia free itself from economic malaise.

Catalans go to the polls Nov. 25 for a regional parliamentary election, and polls show pro-independence parties in front.

“Madrid has been draining us dry for too long,” says Josep Casadella, a corporate human-resources administrator. He became an Internet sensation not long ago after posting a video of himself refusing to pay the fare at a toll booth and complaining that Spain should build free roads for all the taxes it collects.

The region’s president, Artur Mas, has called the marriage between Catalonia and Spain’s capital one of “mutual fatigue.” He has pledged to place an independence referendum before voters.

Appalled at the separatist sentiment, a military veterans’ association said that politicians pushing for Catalonian independence should be tried for “high treason.” In recent days, pro-Spanish- unity protesters held a smaller demonstration of their own. Marchers held a sign reading: “Help, Europe. Nacionalists are crazy.”

Spain’s internal struggle echoes a larger debate convulsing the euro zone itself, as wealthier northern nations complain about supporting poorer southern ones. But now, as Europe enters its fifth year of crisis, the economic strains are deepening the fractures within some nations.

In Spain and Belgium, and to a degree Italy, local and national governments are battling over how to allocate scarce resources. Even within Germany, which is economically stronger and politically stable, richer areas are grumbling about the cost of subsidizing the poorer areas.

Catalonia’s president, Artur Mas, called the marriage between his region and the Spanish capital one of “mutual fatigue” in a speech, likening it to the way “northern and southern Europe have grown weary of one another.”

Cultural and linguistic variances within many EU countries only make matters worse. Catalonia itself is a prime example: Its own language is widely spoken and instilled in younger generations as the main language in most elementary schools.

Throughout the continent “there are some very long-standing strains and tensions of unequal regional economic development that are now being brought to the surface,” says Adrian Smith, editor of the journal European Urban and Regional Studies.

Catalonia’s turmoil represents a major threat to European leaders’ hope of containing Europe’s crisis by stabilizing Spain, which is home to the euro zone’s fourth-largest economy but is also vying with Greece for the highest unemployment rate in the euro zone, around 25%. Policy makers had hoped that EU aid would keep Spain afloat while investors digest losses in Greece, which is even more troubled.

Spain’s financial markets are quivering at the mere talk of secession of Catalonia, which produces almost 19% of Spain’s economic output and 21% of its taxes. Investors fear the revolt will undermine Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s plan to get a grip on spending, particularly in the 17 regional governments that have been a big source of Spain’s deficit.

If pro-independence parties triumph at the ballot box in next month’s regional election, Catalonia’s leader, Mr. Mas, will face pressure to make good on a vow to place an independence referendum before voters. National authorities say that would be illegal.

Mr. Mas studiously avoids the word “independence” to define his goal. Some analysts believe he would satisfied simply with a more favorable revenue-sharing deal. Meanwhile, impelled by swelling support for secession, he has become bolder, asserting publicly several times that “Catalans demand the instruments of State.”

Further muddying the Spanish political picture, pro-independence groups in Basque Country—another region where separatist sentiment is strong—won control of parliament there in elections Oct. 21.

Outside of Spain, Belgium faces the biggest separatist strain. There, a vibrant separatist movement in the wealthier, Dutch-speaking Flanders wants to cut ties with poorer, French-speaking Wallonia. For the moment, a political impasse has been avoided by formation of a coalition government that excludes the separatist N-VA party, even though it won the most votes.

Still, local elections this month only heightened tensions. The N-VA’s leader, Bart de Wever, won the mayoral race in Antwerp, the country’s second-largest city, and used his acceptance speech to call for more independence. “Your government does not have the support of Flanders,” he told Prime Minister Elio Di Rupo, who hails from Wallonia.

In Italy, as in Spain, the regional spats are partly rooted in pre-crisis deals that gave regional governments more spending authority, but without more responsibility to raise revenue, says Alberto Alesina, a Harvard University economist. “All that people are talking about are enormous scandals and wasting of money at the regional level,” says Mr. Alesina. In Italy, he says, the south is the bigger culprit but says the north is hardly blameless.

When the southern island of Sicily recently needed a €400 million transfer, or about $520 million, from the central government to continue paying its bills, Northern Italians grumbled about claims of payroll-padding there. They cited as an example the island’s 27,000-strong corps of forest rangers hired during the fire season. Sicily is roughly the size of Massachusetts.

In Spain, financial woes are putting the union on the rocks. In August, Catalonia said it would seek a €5 billion bailout from the national government to make debt payments. Catalan officials say they would have no need for budget-cutting or bailouts if the central government were distributing tax revenue fairly. Some 43 cents of every euro Catalonia pays in taxes doesn’t come home, according to data compiled by the Catalonia government.

Underlying the grievances is Catalans’ image of themselves as a hardworking, thrifty people, “the Germans or Lutherans of Spain,” says sociologist Enrique Gil Calvo, who was born in a neighboring northern region. Residents of Catalonia, about three-quarters of whom speak Catalan, are openly scornful of what they consider to be the indolence of southern Spaniards.

People from Madrid, for their part, poke fun at what they perceive to be Catalans’ workaholic, stingy nature. The discovery of copper wire, one joke goes, came about as a result of two Catalans engaging in a tug of war over a penny.

The debate is no laughing matter to Catalan independentistas, as the secession supporters are known. They view themselves as patriots “just like George Washington,” says Jaume Vallcorba, a businessman who heads a pro-independence group, Fundacio Catalunya Estat.

As an independent nation, Catalonia would have GDP per capita of €30,500, which would rank it seventh in the European Union, just behind Denmark and ahead of Germany, Mr. Vallcorba’s group says in its presentation. He adds that Catalonia’s exports to the rest of the world recently surpassed its sales to the rest of Spain.

In a briefing, a senior official in Madrid said that Catalans conveniently overlook help they get from the national government, such as the billions of euros being used to bail out a locally run savings bank.

Even some Catalans think the independentistas “are painting a picture that is prettier than the reality would be,” says José María Gay de Liébana, an economist at the University of Barcelona who can trace his Catalan lineage to the Middle Ages. How, he asks, would Catalonia’s already indebted and deficit-ridden government shoulder the added economic burden of opening embassies all over the world, creating its own police and customs agencies, and possibly an army?

Mr. Gay de Liébana adds that Catalonia would have to assume a reasonable share of Spain’s national debt, perhaps as much as €200 billion. And he wonders whether the breakaway nation would ever be accepted into the EU, particularly in the face of certain opposition from Spain. “People would say we abandoned the ship when things got tough, instead of rowing together,” he says.

As Spain’s economy sinks further into recession, however, more people seem willing to take the plunge to independence. “There are many people who didn’t favor independence a couple of years ago, who now view it as our only hope,” says Laia Serrano, an economist who last year formed a nonprofit group, BarcelonActua, to help the growing number of recession victims.

On a recent Thursday night, she had set up a soup kitchen on a downtown Barcelona street where about 60 people lined up for meal boxes. One 78-year-old retiree said the situation reminded him of waiting for ration tickets in the hard years after the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s.

“Everyone says that independence will mean more jobs, so we have to support it,” said another man, who said he was 35 years old and unemployed for four years.

Clashes with central authority are a recurring theme in Catalan history. In the 18th-century War of Spanish Succession, Spain’s Bourbon king, Philip V, crushed Catalan forces who had cast their lot with his Austrian rival. Later, during the Civil War, Catalonia was a stronghold of resistance to another strongman, Gen. Francisco Franco, who would harshly suppress Catalan culture during his four-decade dictatorship.

Perhaps because Catalonia couldn’t count on much support from central authorities, an aggressive spirit of entrepreneurship flourished. “Catalonia was globalized before anyone knew what that meant,” says Salvador Cardús i Ros, a political writer. Even in the 19th century, he notes, a distinctively Catalan product, the tangy sausage butifarra, was marketed abroad and manufactured with machinery from Germany, meat from Northern Europe and spices from Asia.

Today Barcelona is home to international heavyweights such as Mango MNG Holding SL, the women’s fashion retailer, and Grupo Planeta, the dominant publisher in Spain and Latin America.

Catalonia is a big tax contributor to the central government. But officials in Barcelona complain the money isn’t redistributed fairly. The annual deficit between what Catalonia pays in taxes and what it gets back from Madrid represents about 8% of Catalonia’s total output, roughly €16 billion, Catalonian officials calculate.

Catalans complain that, as a consequence of underinvestment, their local roads and infrastructure is inferior to that in poorer parts of Spain. “We have to choose between using public roads that are dangerous, or toll roads that are expensive,” says Manel Xifra, president of Comexi, a packaging-machinery company with €100 million in revenue.

In Catalonia, toll roads make up almost three times the proportion of the regional highway system as they do in the region of Madrid—a smaller geographical area, but one that is roughly similar in GDP and population.

He also complains that national officials have dallied for years in making a logistically important investment to connect Barcelona’s port to its train line. And that Barcelona’s airport provides too few international flights, forcing transfers when he travels for business.

Some Catalan executives, though, are worried about the impact of the independentistas on business. Jose Manuel Lara, the chief of Grupo Planeta, recently told a radio interviewer that much of the company’s operations would need to be transferred out of Catalonia if it seceded, because it wouldn’t make sense for a Spanish language publisher to be based in a region where Catalan was the official language.

To cover its expenses, Catalonia’s government has ratcheted up the top marginal income-tax rate to 56%. That is the highest in Spain, and only a hair below Sweden, at 56.6%.

“You can’t tolerate a Swedish level of taxes and African level highways,” says Xavier Sala-i-Martín, a Catalan economist who teaches at Columbia University and who says he is “pro choice,” supporting the Catalans’ effort to determine their future democratically.

Catalonia’s frustrations surged to the forefront during a Sept. 11 independence rally that drew more than one million demonstrators. Rosa Maria Sastre, an 81-year-old retiree, was too infirm to join the independentistas, so her granddaughter marched carrying a poster-size photograph of Mrs. Sastre. “We’d been waiting a long time to send a message,” Mrs. Sastre says.

On both sides, ardor is rising. The mayor of the Catalan city of Vic recently draped the red-and-yellow striped Catalan banner on the balcony of the historic municipal hall there. A few nights later, vandals climbed up and burned the flag to cinders.

Just a personal anecdote. I have been reading a lot of Italian lately (with the help of Google Translate). I already read Spanish fairly well. I have studied French, Portuguese and Italian, and I can read Portuguese and French to some extent, Portuguese better than French.

But I confess that I am quite lost with Italian. This is worse than French and worse than Portuguese. A couple weeks of wading through this stuff hasn’t made me understand it any better.

Portuguese and Galician are said to be so close that they are a single language. I don’t agree with that at all, but they are very close, much closer to Spanish and Portuguese. Intelligibility may be on the order of 80-90%.

Nevertheless, the other day I tried to read a journal article on Galician. It looked like it was written in Portuguese, and who would write in Galician anyway? I copied the whole thing into Google Translate and let it ride. I waded through the whole article, and I must say it was a disaster. I had a very hard time understanding many of the main points of the article.

Then I remembered that Translate works on Galician now, so I decided on an off chance that the guy may have written the piece in Galician for some nutty reason. I ran it through Translate using Galician as target. The article went through perfectly. You could understand the whole thing. It was then that I realized how far apart Portuguese and Galician really are.

You can try some other experiments.

Occitan is said to be nearly intelligible with Spanish or maybe even French, better if you know both. There’s no Google Translate for Occitan yet, but I had to deal with a lot of Occitan texts recently. I couldn’t make heads or tails of them despite by Romance reading background. So I tried using Translate to turn them into Spanish or French. French was a total wreck, and there was no point even bothering with that. Spanish was much better, but even that was a serious mess.

Now we come to the crux. Catalan and Occitan are said to be so close that they are nearly one language. Translate now works in Catalan. So I ran the Occitan texts through Translate using Catalan. The result was a serious mess, but you could at least understand some of what the Occitan texts were about. But no way on Earth were those the same languages.

People keep saying that if you can read Spanish, you can read Portuguese. It’s not true, but you can see why people say it. Try this. Take a Spanish text and run it through Translate using the Portuguese filter. Now take a Portuguese text and run it through Translate using the Spanish filter. See what a mess you end up with!

Despite the fact that I can read Spanish pretty well, I have tried to read texts in Aragonese, Asturian, Extremaduran, Leonese and Mirandese. These are so close that some even say that they are dialects of Spanish. But even if you read Spanish, you can’t really read any of those languages, and they are all separate languages, I assure you. Sure, you get some of it, but not enough, and it’s a very frustrating experience.

There are texts on the Net in something called Churro or Xurro. It’s a Valencian-Aragonese transitional dialect spoken around Teruel in Aragon in Spain. It also has a lot of Old Castillian and a ton of regular Castillian in it. Wikipedia will tell you it’s a Spanish dialect. Running it through both the Spanish and Catalan filters didn’t work and ended up with train wrecks. I doubt if Xurro is a dialect of either Catalan or Spanish. It’s probably a separate language.

There is another odd lect spoken in the same region called Chappurriau. It is spoken in Aguaviva in Teruel in the Franca Strip. The Catalans say these people speak Catalan, but the speakers say that their language is not Catalan. Intelligibility with Catalan is said to be good. So effectively this is a Catalan dialect.

I found some Chappurriau texts on the Net and ran them through Translate using Catalan as the output. The result was an unreadable disaster, and I couldn’t really figure out what they were saying. Then I tried the Spanish filter, and that was even worse. I am starting to think that maybe Chappurriau is a separate language as its speakers say and not a Catalan dialect after all.

I conclude that the ability to cross read across the Romance languages is much exaggerated.

Not only that, but many Romance microlanguages, transitional dialects and lects that are supposedly dialects of larger languages may actually be separate languages.

It will take some time for me to describe the history of this language. The Wikipedia article here is a good start.

The Islenos apparently arrived in from the Canary Islands to Louisiana and eastern Texas in the 1700’s. Over time, they were augmented by other Spanish immigrants from many other parts of Spain speaking a variety of languages including Catalan, Andalusian and Galician. In addition, over time there was a lot of interaction with the French speakers of Louisiana, so many French words went into the language. Somehow some Portuguese also went in. A huge amount of English vocabulary and even grammar has gone into the language, especially with the last generation of speakers. The Islenos retained their archaic Canarian Spanish from the 18th Century, speaking it as a first language up until the 1940’s due to the isolation of its main speech community on St. Bernard Parish near New Orleans. However, roads were built to the parish and in 1915, schools arrived. Repeated hurricanes caused Islenos to flee to New Orleans. A number of them served in World War 2 and Vietnam. The present generation of Isleno first language speakers are all over 60 years old. A few Islenos under 50 speak the language, and more can understand it but not speak it.

Islenos originally started out ranching cattle, but then they moved into planting sugar cane and growing a variety of crops for the New Orleans market. In the last century, many Islenos made their living by fishing, shrimping, crabbing, etc.

A group of them moved to San Antonio, Texas, where they fought in the Alamo and took part in other battles in the Texan War of Independence. Isleno Spanish died in San Antonio around 1950, but Islenos still maintain the culture there in other ways.

They still play songs called decimas and they continue to fix traditional Canarian dishes.

There is another dialect spoken by Islenos in Valenzuela, Louisiana called Brulis. However, this is mostly an Acadian French dialect. Another group of Islenos in Galveztown speak a dialect that is basically Mexican Indian Nahuatl of all things.

It is said that this accent is quite similar to Puerto Rican and Cuban Spanish. Many Cubans and Puerto Ricans also came from the Canary Islands around the same time, and Cuban and Louisiana Canarians used to trade with each other a long time ago.

If any of my readers can understand Spanish, I would be curious if you can understand this interesting rustic Spanish lect. I can understand Spanish fairly well, but I had a hard time with a lot of this speech, though some of it did sound something like Cuban Spanish. If you speak Spanish, let us know if you can understand these guys.